2007
Calgary, Canada
Providence Manor Rehabilitation Center
-1-
“Daddy, I don’t want shot,” Grayson pouts, stamping his feet on the icy sidewalk.
“I told you, sweetheart, we’re not getting shots today,” Haley reminds him calmly before pulling him through the automatic doors. “Get in here, it’s freezing.”
He had to give Grayson credit for even recognizing Providence Manor Rehabilitation Center as a medical facility. From the outside, the glass and metal building looked like it belonged on a modern college campus and the waiting room may as well be for a spa.
At the marbled check in desk Jean chats enthusiastically with the receptionists while Minnow stands uncharacteristically silent beside him. Grayson is immediately taken with the stone water feature in the back of the waiting room and toddles eagerly towards it.
“Grayson--” Haley starts but stops when he sees a sign that says the water is for touching. With one eye on Grayson, he turns to Skylar Lansing, who had followed in behind them.
This wasn’t the Disney World Christmas break
he’d planned but Sky's plane ticket from where his dad was stationed in South Korea was nonrefundable. He’d said he wanted to help Haley with Grayson. If
nothing else exciting happened this week, Haley was at least glad Sky got to ride in the private jet Rias had arranged to
bring them from Las Vegas to Canada.
“How do I look ?," Haley asks.
He'd removed the black Diane von Furstenberg peacoat he’d borrowed from Minnow.
“Fine ?,” Sky suggests, taking a jelly doughnut from the lobby's continental breakfast bar.
Underneath he wore cargo pants and a red and white track jacket-- both items were one size smaller than they should be and the pants just low enough to show a small strip of skin. He'd taken advantage of Sky’s visit and gotten a facial, blowout and a lash lift the day before.
“Ready, love ?,” Jean asks. He holds out a visitor's badge to Haley.
“Are you going to be okay out here ?,” Haley asks Sky as they work together to wrestle Grayson out of the Minnie Mouse coat he’d borrowed from Atsumi. “I’m just going to take him in to say hi and if it’s too much I’ll bring him back out here with you.”
Sky nods and finds a seat in the waiting room with his iPod and a copy of Percy Jackson.
Luce’s private room was just as impressive as the rest of the rehab facility with hardwood floors and marble countertops. He even had a Christmas tree and twinkling lights on a bay window that overlooked a frozen lake. A morning talk shows played in the flat screen embedded into the wall opposite his bed.
Rias Washington sat on the couch in the corner of the room, typing furiously on his phone. He was dressed down in black suit pants and a white v-neck t-shirt that showed his colorful full body tattoo.
“Oh, thank god, you’re finally here.” Rias greets them, looking up from his smartphone. “Did you check in at the hotel alright ? I know it not much but it’s the closest one--”
“It’s great,” Haley assures him. He hardly classified Holiday Inns as 'not much.'
“Excellent,” Rias smiles but it doesn't reach his eyes. “I have a conference call I need to hop on--”
“I’m sorry,” Minnow’s voice breaks behind them. She sighs, stepping out of the room and shakes her head. “…I can’t do this. I can't be in here--”
“It's okay. You should be on this call anyway,” Rias tells her. He puts a conciliatory arm around her and escorts her out of the room. “Come on, I’ll show you the coffee bar.”
Haley felt for Rias. He’d taken on a lot of responsibility as caregiver for his brother in the last few months.
A pretty nurse (Haley had noticed all the nursing staff looked suspiciously like models) in a modern cut purple scrubs sat at Luce’s bedside, spoon feeding him from a ceramic bowl. She sets the bowl down as he approaches the bed. Luce’s eyes were closed and he lay prone in the bed. The nurse moves his mouth to coax him to eat what appeared to be yogurt.
Haley feels Grayson shrinking behind him.
“I’ll leave you all to your visit. If you could get him to eat some that would be great,” The nurse says cheerily as she wipes Luce’s mouth before bending to his level. “I will check on you later Mr. Grace.”
Haley sits in the chair the nurse vacated and takes Luce's hand. “Did you think you’d gotten rid of us ?”
The last time he had seen Luce was four
months ago in the ICU after his back-to-back brain and spine surgeries.
He looks small and sickly in the bed, his muscle definition was gone along with half his body weight. His hair had been shaved down to a low buzz and the right side of his face drooped from paralysis. Haley inspects him closely. He was clean and clearly being well taken care of in this place.
Haley picks Grayson up and puts him in his lap, tickling him and kissing his face to make him smile.
“Look, Grayson. It’s Luce.” Haley says. “Say hi to Luce, sweetheart.”
Grayson, who’d suddenly gone shyer than
Haley had ever seen, turns away to hide
his face in Haley’s chest.
“Look at you, little brother,” Jean greets Luce congenially, propping himself on the end of the bed.
Luce's eyes open slowly. They are red and puffy and there is no mistaking the venom there-- most of the it directed towards Haley.
“…T-t-t-old you…”, Luce croaks. “No…t-t-to fucking come.”
Grayson, who had slipped under the armchair, whimpers quietly at the sound of his voice. It was unrecognizable--raspy and heavily slurred.
“How about I take the little one back to that lovely young man in the waiting room ?,” Jean says, gesturing to Grayson.
Haley nods.
“Thanks. And please don’t corrupt Sky. He’s only sixteen.”
“Oh, no promises, love,” Jean retorts with a grin, carrying Grayson out of the room.
Haley picks up the ceramic bowl of yogurt the nurse left behind. He spots flecks of fresh fruit and a swirl of honey in the creamy white yogurt. Out of curiosity he tastes a spoonful and is not surprised to find it’s delicious.
“This place is amazing. I’m about to throw myself off a bridge so I can have a bed next to you--”
“I…I…told you. N-n-n-ot…to...”
Haley makes a small spoonful of the yogurt, puts it in the corner of Luce’s mouth and waits for him to move to eat it.
“I wasn’t going to come,” Haley says quietly, pushing the yogurt off the spoon until it slid into his mouth. “But I needed to make sure you were coming back home to me.”
He'd had been heartbroken when Rias
told him Luce didn’t want him to visit. He threw himself into other things. He got a a full time job at a care facility for children and adolescents with disabilities. The pay
wasn’t great but the hours were flexible and after seeing Luce’s outrageous hospital bills he knew he needed to get a job with health insurance for he and Grayson.
But then Providence Manor reported Luce was refusing food and treatment. The staff psychiatrist diagnosed him with depression and had him declared mentally incompetent so Rias could become his conservator and take over his healthcare decisions.
Luce hadn’t taken any of that well and Rias suggested Haley visiting might be good.
So Haley had come.
He’d seen symptoms like Luce’s in nursing homes; patients who didn't want to do the work and just wanted to wait to die. Most of the time Haley respected it because they were older and had been through enough. But Luce still had a chance.
“Don’t…want this...any of this...” Luce slurs.
“I know, baby,” he says carefully. “But I think…if you take your antidepressants it might make it better--”
“No.”
“Luce--”
“No. I--”
“I know you had a bad reaction. You can get the dosage adjusted but you have to take them regularly first,” he says. “You know I take them…It helps.”
“Not you….don’t like this….place…. didn’t ask to be fucking brought here--”
“The residents I’ve worked with would kill to have even half the amenities in this place. Rias did so much to get you in here--”
“Rias…Don’t like the way he…the way he….the way he talks to me. I'm not... his charity--”
“Stop it, Luce. Nobody thinks that. He loves you. I love you." He kisses Luce’s forehead. “Hey, look what I found.”
Haley looks over his shoulder to make sure no one is coming in the room and unzips his track jacket to reveal the CUMSLUT shirt he’d been wearing in the photo on Luce’s nightstand.
“Don’t…get erections--”
“You will. We can work on that when you come back home,” he winks.
“Don’t want to….to live like this. You should know that…should have let me die out there.”
“That wasn’t an option,” he says and inhales deeply to stop the tears from coming.
Haley goes into his backpack and takes out the laptop Sara had given him. He turns it on and Luce looks mildly curious as Haley clicks a few keys and then turns the screen.
“You shouldn’t have come…”, Luce says
closing his eyes and turning his head away from the laptop.
“I can leave this laptop with the occupational therapist--”
“No. Just…Go. You...can...you can leave me.”
“I can’t.”
---
-2-
The next morning Haley flies first class back to Las Vegas with Skylar and Grayson in tow while Minnow and Rias take the private jet to a last minute meeting in Europe. He’d told Rias it wasn’t necessary to pay for their flights but Rias had thoughtfully ignored him.
When they land in Las Vegas he has a
message from Sara Grace asking him to come alone to her condo—which would
be their condo when Luce was released from rehab and he moved in to help Sara.
He leaves Grayson and Skylar with money for pizza and drives to the city, knocking on the condo door twice before letting himself in with his key. The condo was mid construction, the lights and water were out and the walls were in complete disarray but Sara sat unbothered in the kitchen with her laptop, surrounded by candles and a generator.
Rias hired contractors to build a wheelchair lift into the outside facade and tear down the wall between Sara's unit and the one next door. The living room and kitchen would be expanded, Luce’s bedroom would get a fully accessible bathroom and they’d add office space for Fallwater.
“How is he ? Is he still struggling ?,” Sara asks when he steps in. “Did he still know how to write code ?”
“He’s being well taken care of,” Haley says to keep it positive. “It's not him...it's the depression.”
“I know,” she nods.“His father had it too...are you sure you still want to do
this ?”
Haley looked at the exposed wiring,
pipes and construction debris. Most of the ‘this’ had been done.
He nods.
“There is something I need to tell you before you move in,” Sara says. “Come sit.”
Haley stills. He thinks about Maxwell’s chronograph and the hotel matchbook he’d found in Luce’s suitcase the day after the accident.
He takes a seat across from her at the table. She’d been drinking wine from a plastic cup and eating takeout from a hole in the wall cafw down the street.
“This is about me,” Sara tells him and he relaxes slightly.
“Luce told me about the…casinos and how you used to...”
“I figured. Did he tell you why we stopped running advantage plays ?”
He shakes his head.
“It’s because I shot a cop,” she says plainly.
I m not proud but I couldn't go to prison. Twyla and Rias were still children and needed me. Do you understand what I’m saying ?”
“You,” Haley cleared his throat. Still trying to process. “You killed someone ?”
“Actually, no,” she says. “I found out
a few years later the cop didn’t die but I’m still a fugitive. I'd been fingerprinted. My
face was on the Arizona news for a long time. The entire time we were doing illegal shit I thought we were invincible…but we weren’t. We were just lucky.
I didn’t want to put Minnow, Jean or even Luce in a situation like mine so I told them we all had to stop and go legit. I told myself I wouldn't break another law and I haven't. I didn't even get a fake social security number which is why I don't have any government documentation. Luce technically owns this condo building. We've been legit and we’ve been doing that for the last 17 years.”
He’d always wondered about that line in Jean’s speech when they won the AEX Visionary Award.
"We did it, baby. We went legit."
“1990...This happened the year before I met Minnow and Luce--”
She nods.
He felt like he finally understood Sara. About why she rarely left her condo but didn’t show any other symptoms of agoraphobia. Why she hadn’t been Luce’s medical proxy, was always on edge in crowds, and wore wigs on the rare occasion she went out.
“I regret shooting that cop everyday. It ruined my life but sometimes...I’m glad it happened. They’ve all moved on and done so well.” she
taps absently on her keyboard. “Luce and I always had a special relationship. I
was barely 16 when I got pregnant. After his father took his own life we were all each other had....Did you know he didn't talk until he was 6 ? His teacher said we made him that way because he was born out of sin...they wanted me to commit him because he might e a danger to society. The doctors told me he'd never really love me--”
“That's such bullshit--”
“It was the seventies,” she shrugs. “I knew he loved me...it wasn't like either of us knew how to say it anyway.
Luce hated that I was going to be living alone when Twyla was in college—a part of me thinks he ruined that job in Palo Alto just so he could come back home…but I know he wanted to start his own life with you and Grayson. He wanted to be a father.”
She smiles sadly to herself.
“I wanted that for him. It feels like a miracle you two found each other. And I’m sorry this happened and ruined that…but if you’re going to be living here I wanted you to know everything.”
Haley works his jaw hesitantly.
“Do you...know about...Palm Springs ?”
“I can assure you Luce just went to the classes and back to the hotel. Why ?”
“Classes ?”
“He goes to ghat programming conference in Palm Springs every year. Most of the programmers who go treat it like a spring break but he treats it like work. Only stays one night and brings all the information back for me to learn. Why are you asking me about that ? ”
“No reason. Sorry,” he shrugs.
Haley remembered his decision to ignore what he'd found. Luce had a reason to be in Palm Springs. And he could have bought his own chronograph.
The stress of everything Haley’s life had become suddenly makes him crack.
He can only laugh.
“Are you okay ?”
“It’s just…it’s like a bad joke-”
“What is ?
“A fugitive, a hacker and a porn star living together.”
---
A/N
I think I stole the "thoughtfully ignored" phrasing from a Lile story. I want to say Litany Lane but it might be QC-verse. I also stole that song but I've always loved that Litany Lane scene where Fierro is ice skating by himself. 🥺🥺🥺
I didn't set out for Luce to be autistic but someone mentioned it in the comments and I think that is right. Luce's character has been on the spectrum in every iteration I've written of him even if I wasn't being explicit about it.
It’s at this chapter I began to fear I might
have jumped the shark (and maybe I have) but…then I started reading those stories of people who
have been fugitives for 20+ years and got away with it. I imagine it was a lot easier to get away with being a fugitive in the early 90s than now.